socialmedianickGet a quote

Remote for global and European clients. In person in Nottingham and the East Midlands.

Your content has potential. But, it's being skipped in the first second.

views delivered on channels and brands I've run
622M+views delivered on channels and brands I've run
engagements
930k+engagements
years in social
10+years in social
markets
5+markets

Including 27M+ views on one futsal channel I grew, with an 8M+ post and multiple videos past 1M, and 70M+ on #RabAtHome for Rab.

Social platforms like TikTok and Instagram don't run one algorithm. They run several, and every post has to win all of them. Miss the first second and it never gets the chance. I find where yours stalls, then fix it, in organic and in paid.

Thirty seconds. No export, no email wall.

Strategy delivered for

  • Dove
  • Persil
  • Cif
  • Sporf
  • ITV Studios
  • Rab
  • Lowe Alpine

Free, thirty seconds

Where do your videos stall?

Four questions, no export, no email wall. You get the stage you stall at and three fixes to try this week.

Question 1 of 4

How many views do most of your videos get?

Think about your last ten posts.

How it works

There isn't one algorithm to beat. There are four.

Every post has to line up the person, the topic, the surface and the platform at the same moment. Miss one and it stops at a few hundred views.

The person

Is this viewer, today, likely to care?

The platform chooses who sees your post one person at a time, from what they do, not from who follows you.

The topic

What is this post actually about?

If it reads as the wrong topic it goes to people who were never going to care, and the system marks it as a failure.

The surface

Is this the right post for here?

Reels, Explore, the feed and search each ask for something different.

The platform

Does this keep people on the app?

A post that keeps people watching and coming back gets more rooms opened for it.

Where it stopped tells you what to fix

Under 1,000 views: the wrong first audience, or an opening that didn't stop anyone. 2,000 to 3,000: the right people and nothing to hold them. Travelled, then stalled: they watched and didn't send or save. Stop, hold, send, in that order.

Why it works

I test it, then I tell you what happened.

I post, test and learn on personal channels, brand channels, new accounts and established ones, so I know what each platform rewards before I write a strategy about it.

I test

Two or three versions of a post, shown to people who don't follow you before the feed sees any. The winner goes live and the lesson goes into the next round.

I listen

I read the comments, the retention graph and the second people drop off, not just the totals.

I teach

I train the teams around me, so the process keeps running after the project ends.

The bit most strategists skip

I ran the accounts before I wrote the strategies.

Ten years in social, most of it with my hands on the thing — shooting, cutting, posting, replying. The strategy work only holds up because of that. You cannot brief a hook you have never had to write at 9pm on a Sunday.

Three launches, sold out, organic only

At Lattice Training I ran the lot end to end — filming, editing, posting. Three consecutive product launches sold out in record time on organic social alone. No paid behind them.

Peak season at the UK's biggest sports publisher

Managed Sporf's social through the busiest months of the football calendar. Reactive content judged in minutes against a live game, not planned six weeks out in a deck.

Daily community, not a posting schedule

Two years running X, Instagram, TikTok and Discord for a Web3 sports project. In the comments every day, which is where you actually learn what a platform rewards.

Why that matters for what you get

TikTok and Instagram are the two platforms I know at the level of mechanics rather than best practice — how the first second decides the next thousand impressions, why a pattern interrupt beats a better idea presented flatly, what audio does to retention. That came from running accounts, not from reading about them. It is also why the reporting on this site measures what it measures: the numbers I chase are the ones that actually moved things when I was the one posting.

Where to start

Pick the problem. I'll pick the work.

Audits to find the gaps, a strategy to fix them, paid and reporting to scale and prove it. Prices where the scope is clear, quotes where it isn't.

£500up to 5 competitors

Competitors

Competitor audit

Where you stand against the brands you are measured against, and what to do about it. Up to five competitors.

See what is included

From £350per brand

Your account

Channel audit

Every post on one brand's channel read and scored, so you know what is working, what is stalling and why.

See what is included

From £75per video

Single videos

Video analysis

Why a video won or stalled, second by second, and what to change next time.

See what is included

From £450per brand per month

Reporting

Monthly report

Your month in social, written up with the commentary and the recommendations, so the report says something.

See what is included

Get a quote

Paid ads

Paid social

Meta and TikTok ads that put money behind what your organic already proved, so you scale winners instead of guessing.

Ask for a quote

Get a quote

Strategy

Strategy

A social-first strategy from brand purpose to a daily process, built on audits of your channel and your competitors.

Ask for a quote

See every service

How it fits together

Diagnose, decide, do, measure.

Every service is one step of the same chain. Start where you are, or take the whole thing as a strategy.

Diagnose

Channel audit, competitor audit, video analysis

What is working, what is stalling, and what the brands you are measured against are doing.

Decide

Consultation and strategy

Brand purpose to consumer tension to content pillars, with tactics for each platform.

Do

Content ideas, paid social, management, community

The ideas to fill the feed, the paid behind what works, and someone to run it day to day.

Measure

Monthly report

What to look at and how to read it, so every month ends with what travelled, what stalled and what to test next.

A strategy is all four.

It includes a channel audit and a competitor audit, consultation, content pillars, platform tactics for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, a content ideas pack, the process to run it and a reporting framework. The audits and the ideas pack alone are from £1,150 at menu prices.

Retainers

Ongoing work, priced like work.

I do not take on anything under £500 a month. Pick a starting point, tell me about your brand, and I will quote what it takes.

Light touch

From £500a month

One brand, kept honest. Your monthly numbers, read properly, with someone to ask.

  • Monthly report on one brand, with the numbers counted correctly
  • Up to two competitors tracked
  • Written commentary and what to do next month
  • One call a month
  • Email for questions
Get a quote
Recommended

Working retainer

From £1,500a month

Your brand and up to five competitors, with ideas and video breakdowns, so the plan keeps moving.

  • Everything in Light touch
  • Up to five competitors tracked
  • Three video breakdowns a month
  • Ten content ideas a month
  • A channel audit every quarter
  • A strategy call each month
Start a conversation

Embedded

Get a quote

Scoped per brief. Several brands or markets, a team to train, or reporting built into your own tools.

  • Multiple brands and markets
  • Sprinklr or Meltwater exports at scale
  • Custom reporting and dashboards
  • Strategy and video production
Talk it through

The maths

What the same work costs another way.

A working retainer covers your brand and five competitors, read every month. Here is what that costs if you do it another way, using published UK figures.

  • Hire an analyst

    A £35,000 salary plus about 15% employer costs (National Insurance and pension) is £3,350 a month, plus about £175 a month for an entry-level reporting tool. Before training or management time. UK salaries for the role run from about £25,000 to £50,000.

    £3,525a month

  • A freelancer, by hand

    About five days a month: roughly 180 posts across six accounts, read at ten minutes each, plus a day to benchmark and write it up. At £322 a day, the average UK freelance social media manager rate.

    £1,610a month

Working retainer, with me

From£1,500a month

Tools and reporting included.

That is £110 to £2,025 a month less than the other ways.

Get a quote

Assumptions: £35,000 is the middle of the £25,000 to £50,000 range seen for UK social media analysts. Employer costs are 15% National Insurance above £5,000 plus the 3% minimum pension. The reporting tool is Sprinklr's entry plan at $2,800 a user a year, converted at $1 = £0.75. The reading time (30 posts a month per account, ten minutes each) is my own estimate.

Sources: Payscale, ERI, YunoJuno, Employer cost calculator, G2 on Sprinklr.

Got an export? Run the free performance report.

Upload your numbers and see what happened: reach, formats, trend and your breakouts, counted correctly. The why is what an audit is for.

Open the report

Do it yourself

I built a tool for this. You can use it.

Break 3 is the video-analysis tool I use on my own client work. It shows why a video won or stalled, second by second, and what the top accounts in a category are doing. If you would rather run it yourself than hire me, it is yours.

See Break 3

Get in touch

Tell me what you're trying to fix.

Pick what you need and the message writes itself. I read every one personally — there is no agency inbox and no sales sequence behind this.

Started off for you — overwrite as much of it as you like.

Goes straight to nick@socialmedianick.com. No list, no newsletter, no CRM sequence.

Track record

Ten years of it

Unilever

Brandverse frameworks and localised strategy

  • Dove
  • Persil
  • Cif
  • Comfort
  • Skip
  • Robijn

Media, sport & entertainment

Reactive, trend-pulse content at publisher scale

  • Sporf
  • ITV Studios
  • Pooky Games

Challenger & specialist

Hands-on social, end to end

  • Rab
  • Lowe Alpine
  • Lattice Training
  • Subway
  • Havas Lynx

Based in Nottingham

Working with Nottinghamshire businesses in person and global brands remotely. Same infrastructure behind both.

Data-driven, not vibes

Reporting runs on a Python analysis workflow built to close the accuracy gaps in AI-generated insight — now used as a company-wide resource at OLIVER.

Direct, no agency layer

You brief me, I do the work. Silver-certified in Oliver AI Training and working toward Gold.

Start with the free stall check. Decide after that.

No pitch deck, no discovery call before you have seen anything useful.